South Bracket: Gonzaga Slight Edge Over Duke; Utah, SMU Darkhorses

16 Mar 2015

Gonzaga has their best shot to make the Final Four, and they are virtually even with Duke as the top two teams in the region.

Two possible surprises are Utah if they can get through a tough opening round game with Stephen F. Austin to give Delon Wright a chance to pull some upsets, and SMU, great since Markus Kennedy became eligible.

The table rates each team in the bracket on seven criteria (explained below the table), with a second table showing each player in the bracket, how valuable each player is, which are injured, and the chance that each player makes the NBA. Most important is how good the team is (see ESPN’s BPI here) subtracted by the Value Add of any injured players.

In both tables, teams appear in the same order in which they appear on the bracket.

Seed

South Bracket

BPI

Health

Hot

NBA

Exp guard

F4 Coach

Top3

Total

1

Duke

88

3

1

1

93

16

North Florida

56

1

57

16

Robert Morris

47

1

48

8

San Diego St.

73

73

9

St. John’s

72

-4

-1

1

1

1

70

5

Utah

83

-1

2

3

2

89

12

Stephen F. Austin

72

1

1

74

4

Georgetown

80

1

81

13

Eastern Washington

56

3

59

6

SMU

79

3

1

2

1

86

11

UCLA

73

1

2

1

77

3

Iowa St.

83

1

(1)

83

14

UAB

56

1

57

7

Iowa

75

1

1

2

79

10

Davidson

77

1

2

2

82

2

Gonzaga

90

-1

1

4

94

15

North Dakota St.

51

1

2

54

The most important factor is simply how good a team is based on ESPN’s BPI. Health measures injuries. Hot indicates if the team improved in the closing week. NBA points to how many NBA players the team will likely produce. Exp guard notes good seniors or juniors in the backcourt. F4 indicates a coach that has made surprising Final Four Runs. Top3 favors teams who rely more on three players who can dominate a game.

The BPI rating is repeated below, followed by how many points each player is worth based on www.valueaddbasketball.com. If a team had a 90 BPI, but a player with a 5.0 Value Add was out injured, then the actual BPI would really be an 85. However, if a team achieved that BPI despite a key player being injured and now he is back at full strength, we note that as well.

The bracket features two other players in the Top 10 at Value Add with Aaron White of Iowa and D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera of Georgetown.